Freddie Mac has planned its first offering of multifamily structured mortgage pass-through certificate deal of the year.

The transaction is expected to be about $1.2 billion in size and price next week.

The K-024 certificates are backed by 74 recently-originated loans guaranteed by Freddie Mac and will be offered to the market by a syndicate of dealers led by Wells Fargo Securities LLC and Barclays Capital. Deutsche Bank Securities, Jefferies & Co., Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley will be co-managers.

The certificates will include two senior principal and interest classes, one senior interest-only class and a junior IO class. Moody’s Investors Services and Morningstar Credit Ratings expected to assign their respective top investment grade ratings to the three senior classes in the deal, subject to ongoing monitoring.

When asked about the outlook for the program this year, Mitchell Resnick, vice president of Freddie Mac multifamily loan pricing and securitization, told this publication that purchases continue to indicate that issuance volume will remain strong.

He said he also continues to expect deals will be backed primarily by 10-year loans that borrowers prefer in order to lock in what have been historically low rates. But other tenures also will be included, albeit likely to a lesser degree.

K deals have been backed by 10-, seven- or five-year fixed- or floating-rate mortgages using a senior/subordinate structure as well as fully wrapped.

Last year, K deal issuance totaled about $21 billion, according to Resnick.